In Raid on bin Laden, Little-Known Geospatial Agency Played Vital Role

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency provided key data and intelligence for tracking down the terrorist leader.

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency produced this 2005 aerial image of bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.(National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency)

President Obama’s first brush with the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency was ignominious. Out for lunch in May 2009, at a Five Guys burger franchise in Washington, the new president started to shake the hands of other customers, TV cameras in tow. Then he turned to men with government ID badges.

“So, what do you do?” Obama asked. “I work at NGA, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency,” one said.

“Outstanding. How long have you been doing that?” the president wondered. “Six years.” Obama then asked: “So, explain to me exactly what this National Geospatial--” His voice trailed off. “Uh, we work with, uh, satellite imagery.” Obama: “Sounds like good work.” The response is obscured by the audio.

Suffice it to say: Obama knows what the NGA does today.

Any number of officials and agencies have been in the limelight since the raid on Osama bin Laden, including the CIA and the Defense Department. But the little-known and little-heralded work of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, often called the NGA, was central to the demise of the terrorist leader.

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The NGA integrates several core intelligence functions. It makes maps and interprets imagery from satellites and drones; it also exploits the electromagnetic spectrum to track terrorists and decipher signatures off of enemy radar. And notably, the NGA is the first intel agency to be headed by a woman: Letitia Long, an intelligence veteran.

The NGA's contributions to the bin Laden mission are substantial. As described to National Journal by senior U.S. policymakers who do not work for the agency, they include:

Creating three-dimensional renderings of the Abbottabad compound using imagery and laser-based sensing devices—laser radar, or ladar.

Analyzing data from a sophisticated next-generation drone that kept watch on the compound before, during, and after the raid. The drone was an RQ-170 built by Lockheed Martin.

Helping the Joint Special Operations Command create mission simulators for the pilots who flew the helicopters into the breach. (This was first reported by Washingtonian magazine.)

Providing to the CIA and other policymakers assessments of the number of people who lived inside the compound, their heights and genders.

NGA Director Long issued a statement on May 2, saying, "I am extremely proud of the work that NGA men and women have done that led directly to this outcome. Their GEOINT was critical to helping the intelligence community pinpoint bin Ladin’s compound."

Long is being modest. The NGA also helped the CIA find the compound itself. Based on tips from human sources and intercepted cell-phone conversations, intelligence analysts had a basic description of the type of place where the courier trusted by bin Laden lived. But it was NGA's analysts who pored over detailed maps and crunched data, coming up with several places in Pakistan that fit the model. One of them was Abbottabad. The bin Laden compound itself was easily noticeable.

“We found a location, and eventually, as we got more and more fidelity, we were able to render it visually. You can build a story and an understanding that you can take to the senior analysts,” a senior NGA analyst said in an interview.

The analyst, who participated in the bin Laden hunt and who has been forward-deployed to Afghanistan, was permitted to speak only on the condition of anonymity. His account was confirmed by intelligence officials who don’t work for the agency.

Not surprisingly, NGA's technological capacities are very secret, because if the terrorists can ascertain what the agency can do with remote sensing data, they can alter their plans accordingly. But the NGA analyst, who had several tours of duty alongside warfighters in Afghanistan, described some of them.

NGA can determine, from quite a distance, what an object or a building is made of.

It conducts sophisticated pattern analysis of human characteristics, such as gait and body size.

It possesses some of the most sophisticated facial recognition software on Earth.

It has mastered “all-weather” imagery analysis: hyperspectral and multispectral sensors on satellites and drones can see through thick clouds.